


Rapture's Nightingale

by Arletiz



Category: BioShock
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 16:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13414902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arletiz/pseuds/Arletiz
Summary: From a childhood in the segregated hoovervilles of St. Louis, Missouri to entertaining in Rapture's prestigious cabarets during it's heyday. Despite her trials & tribulations, Grace Holloway proved to be one of Rapture's most sensational figures.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Rapture's Black Pearl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13152159) by [Arletiz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arletiz/pseuds/Arletiz). 



**_August 1st, 1963_ **

 

The young journalist sat in the crumbling living room, quietly observing his surroundings. The modest apartment, resembled those in Upper Harlem, with a radio, phonograph and piano, numerous photographs on the wall, including a large portrait of Lamb. Mother Grace, among the eldest (and most respected) resident in Pauper’s Drop sat before him, sipping rationed coffee, observed her guest. Her life, plentiful in experiences, had been a series of fluctuations. Once the daughter of sharecroppers had once had the glamorous career of a successful entertainer in Rapture now in the prosaic post of lieutenant-governor of Pauper’s Drop, which position she now holds.

It’s her interesting life, which brought the young journalist from the recently reinstated Rapture Tribune to her doorstep. “I suppose you want to begin from the beginning” Grace had noticed the journalist produce a notebook and pencil. “I was born in rural Missouri, but I recall very little of that as I was brought to St. Louis as a young child. It was so long ago.” Mr. Poole, her rather reclusive husband shifted in his seat. “There can sometimes be much in little.”

 

“In everyone’s life there must be some unforgettable moments.” The journalist added.


	2. St. Louis Blues

In the early 1920s, nearly 3,300 miles away in the fields of rural Missouri, Grace Holloway was born to a Native-American father and mulatto mother (product of a non-consensual interracial relationship). Her father traveled the dusty roads across Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana in old minstrel shows performing to Ragtime and Jazz from one tent show to the next. Meanwhile her mother struggled to raise her daughter on the wage of a washerwoman.

 

In 1929, upon the outbreak of the Great Depression, after receiving a job as a hotel chambermaid, her mother hauled young Grace north along the Mississippi River to Saint Louis. With her mother was away working, young Gracie, while she busied herself with chores was often heard singing. Her voice ringing throughout the tenement. Two years later,with her mother finding it impossible to support herself and a child, the family moved in with Grace’s grandparents beside the train tracks along the Mississippi flood-prone banks. They lived in a shack made of crate wood, scraps of sheet metal and canvas. The coal-fired stove was built of used brick and grates from old locomotive fireboxes. The family washed everything (including themselves in a old rusty bathtub. They called their crowded refuge Hooverville, a bitter nod to President Herbert Hoover, and one of many Hoovervilles across the land.

 

Her grandfather, who was apart of the brotherhood, often received hard to obtain black market supplies though his fellow  _ brothers _ . At one point he even bought a gun to defend the house from thieves. However the police often came around hassling the family. How could a poor Negro family afford to keep their pantry stocked? So he got himself a box with a false bottom, and hid his pistol underneath. Afterwards he’d drop in a whole stack of girlie pictures as well for the police to find. Once the inquisitive Grace asked him why he’d do something like that and he said the best way to hide a thing is to leave it with a lady -- because once a man lays eyes on her, he plain forgets what he's looking for.

 

Grace often found herself daydreaming when she was supposed to be working. She dreamed of travelling to some mysterious far off land, becoming a big star all dressed up in pearls and feathers like the performers whom she saw in the tent shows on the outskirts of the city. Upon the outbreak of WWII as factory jobs opened up everywhere, she found herself making money she would have never made scrubbing floors. In the late hours, making her way through the dark streets she could hear the blaring jazz and moaning blues pouring out from the backstreet brothels. 

 

By 19, she found herself hanging around the around the gin mills where she discovered she could make more money working table to table, as well as perfect her vocal craft. Music wailed throughout the building as cigarette and reefer smoke swirled around the room, sticking to the clothes of the drunken bodies dancing and rubbing up against each other, often disappearing into small side rooms for further excitement. In the tiny corner stage, Grace performed several songs in her cheap lamé dress to the drunken crowd. While she powdered her face in the dingy washroom, she dreamed of being on the stage, in lovely gowns and jewelry like the pretty actresses she saw on the movie screens.


	3. Harlem Bound

**_1944-1945_ **

Frequently troupes of black singers, dancers & comedians traveled from town to town gathering audiences within the theaters, cinemas and tent shows on the outskirts of the city. In the mid 1940s, a visiting blues singer, Arabella Smith heard Grace singing in uptown nitery and offered the girl a place within her touring revue, the  _ Dixie Steppers _ . Barely 19 year old, Grace now found herself a chorus girl, she smiled to herself as Arabella showed her to her own corner in the busy dressing room. The other girls half dressed, applying makeup onto their faces shot filthy looks to the shabbily dressed girl who had come to replace one of their friends. "If you need anything honey, my door is always open." said Arabella as she disappeared through the door into her own personal room at the end of the dressing room.   
  
After a few minutes of sitting quietly, Grace got up and quietly knocked on Arabella's door before entering. It wasn't anything like the rather bare dressing where the other girls were huddled. Beautiful silk and satin gowns covered with decorative beads filled the racks that lined the filthy walls on three sides. Rugs covered the old creaking wooden floors, an old table mirror sat in the corner filled with numerous glass perfume bottles and jars. Arabella watched as the skinny girl looked in awe, “Cardboard under the rugs keeps the rats out. I’ve spent a good portion of my life in dumps like this and honey I’ve learned to provide for my comfort.”  The large woman reclined on back on her chair, barely covering her naked body in a black robe. “This your first time out honey, where are you from girl?”   
  
The singer studied the shy young girl, very much unlike the other rowdy chorus girls that she had to put up with everyday. “Well..St. Louis. I’ve never been anywhere before.” Arabella handed Grace a short short multi colored dress and stockings, “White folks love to see us singin’ and dancin’, but they want to see us sportin’ in fine clothes too. Put these on and sit at that mirror.” Grace quickly changed in front of the woman and sat at the dressing table. The woman moved closer, holding up a brush and compact. “Even a pretty girl like yourself could learn to use a bit of this. You ever wore makeup before?” The woman started applying the brownish powders to Grace’s face, “No ma’am never.” Grace held her breath as the brush swept quickly across her face. “Paint is just another part of our profession. You’ll be breaking hearts for sure, girl.”

Several months on the road with the revue taught her the ways of the world. Months of being bullied by fellow chorus girls, suffering from scheming theatrical agents and avoiding the temptation of drugs. After winding south to New Orleans, the troupe finally made its way north to New York. It was a world different from the slow blues that rang through her hometown. She found it's busy streets exciting, bands led by Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Fletcher Henderson blasting Jazz and Swing all night from the Cotton Club, Small’s Paradise and Savoy Ballroom. Blacks, tired of financial and moral woes from the South, struck North to seek their fortunes in Harlem. Not only were there ex-sharecroppers filling the cheap tenements daily, but the strange speaking Caribbeans as well. 

At every colored drug store along Seventh Avenue, besides a few gambling men and the numbers racket guy..were a few shelves stocked full of hair straightening jars & skin bleaching creams ('Makes skin so light, you wouldn't know she was colored!'). Although they were expensive and hard to come by back home, they were plentiful in Harlem. Many of the black men and women that passed Grace by had terribly pale faces and straightened hair. She soon learned in many Harlem nightclubs, bleaching your skin was mandatory amongst the chorus girls. 

"How strange!" Grace mentioned to Hattie King, one of her few friends on the chorus lines, "Remember back in Louisiana, those directors made us black up for our shows. Now it’s the complete opposite" The girls had been running errands all day for Arabella, for a bit of extra change. Hattie shifted the parcels in their arms, "Oh but I used to see women tryin’ to buy those creams back home in Philly. Another friend of mine got sick from that bleachin' stuff they had to put on."

The girls turned the corner to their boarding house. The little two room flat had several pallets on the floor, all the girls were knocked out after a bit of heavy drinking after the show. Stage costumes hanging on hooks on the wall or drying at the windows, street clothes and shoes folded and lining the walls. The girls made their way to Arabella's room, which she kept to herself (and her occasional lover). She was lying in bed puffing tobacco pipe, one of the chorus girls laying in bed beside her flipping through a magazine with her deep red varnished nails. "Chile just leave the stuff on that chair." Grace, catching herself from gawking at the sight of Arabella's large naked breasts lying over her stomach, quickly placed the parcels onto the chair beside the bed. 

  
Arabella grabbed Grace's wrist before she could turn and head for the door, "Don't act so surprised honey. You welcome to join us an try it sometime, might like it!" Arabella threw herself back in bed while her young girlfriend smirked from behind her magazine. Realizing Hattie had already left, Grace turned on her heels and left, shutting the door behind her. "Ha! Can't believe you ain't seen big 'Bella's naked ass already. Well get used to it, 'tho I'm surprised..she usually not like this when we get to Harlem. Landladies up here so nosy." Grace wasn't completely shocked by that days events. Since she got on the road, after every show the cast left for the nearest bar or gin house to throw dice, drink or just head straight for the boarding house for another kind of fun. Grace typically followed Hattie, who went straight to bed after a drink or two.

During their performances, whenever Arabella made her way onto the stage for her solo number singing the blues, Grace would watch from behind the curtains. She’d find her body uncontrollably swaying to the music as the banjo player struck the chords. Although the other girls rolled their eyes, preferring the upbeat Swing and Boogie to the slow moving Blues, Grace couldn’t help but love the music she grew up listening to along the Mississippi river.

 


	4. On the Road

**_June-October 1946_ **

After two years on the road, Arabella Smith & her Dixie Steppers packed and caught the next train out of New York. Grace quickly found employment as a waitress at the Clanger Bar near the dock district near the Bronx. Previously, Grace recalled the bar being owned by Harv Merton but when she walked in to ask for a job, she instead found the shady Frank Gorland behind the bar.

The walls of the dusty, cave-like boxing bar were decorated with worn-out boxing gloves, frayed ropes from rings, black-and-white photos of old-time boxers going back to John L. Sullivan. Reminding her of her days back St. Louis, Grace tied her apron around her waist and made her way between the tables serving what Mr. Gorland called the ‘best German-style brew in New York’. In between serving customers, Grace found herself singing in the ring during the boxing match intermissions, as long as she gave half of her tips back to Mr. Gorland. After five weeks, she answered a advertisement in a theatrical periodical calling for talented colored singers and dancers to tour Canada, Greenland and Iceland in a series of engagements. Organized by a ex-dancer Andrew Tribble and bureaucratic stuffy-looking manager, The  _ Roaming Revue  _ departed for Montreal in July for its first series of engagements. Gorland hadn’t seemed to notice Grace’s departure as he’d been unusually busy spending time on the New York wharfs.

The revue awed Montreal audiences at the Casino Montparnasse. The French-speaking audience watched in awe as the band wailed loudly and the girls danced across the stage to the jazz. There wasn't anything of much interest during their August engagement in Nuuk, Greenland..besides the Northern Lights. Playing in the strange cold city wasn’t much excitement for the majority of the girls.  “Honey as soon as this is over, I’m heading back to Harlem”, despite the audiences being extremely enthusiastic to hearing the music and watching the girls shuffle their feet. They endured the Greenland engagement for several successful weeks before moving on to Reykjavik for another month’s engagement.

There was no such thing as a colored restroom or hotel in Iceland. Perhaps because there was hardly any blacks there to begin with. She of course couldn’t see herself in Iceland for the rest of her life, on the other hand, was excited just to be anywhere outside of St. Louis and even more thrilled by outside of America and it’s primitive Jim Crow laws.    
  
During the day, she pulled on her fur coat and roamed the streets and stared into the shop windows, friendly local men took her to corner bars and cafes introducing her to local beers and delicacies. She couldn’t imagine herself fraternizing among the locals and the police not harassing her to move along. In fact the local Icelandic police kindly gave her directions around in their strange language. Eventually she picked up a few phrases herself, "Halló, ég er Grace. Hægt er að sýna mér aftur á hótelið?" There was another American group playing in town and they weren’t to keen on the visiting Negroes running around without supervision in the little cold country. Grace enjoyed herself there, wasn’t going to be harassed by the other entertainers and quietly told herself that she wasn’t going back to America anyhow. Someone must have heard her thoughts...

One night, towards the end of their Reykjavik engagement as the girls strutted across the stage, Grace noticed a strange dark-haired man sitting at Mr. Tribble’s table beside the stage. The man whispered something into his ear, and the two walked off towards the dressing rooms. Upon finishing their last number, making their way back into the dressing room the troupe noticed, standing beside their manager in the middle of the room was mysterious Russian-American businessman, Andrew Ryan. Grace recalled seeing his name on the newspapers they used to fill their shoes during the harsh Missouri winters. "Mr. Ryan here is opening a new restaurant soon and has asked for us to be among the opening acts. Since it doesn’t open until November, I’ve organized a short tour across Iceland before we arrive in Rapture.” Rapture? What's Rapture? Grace wasn't sure what she thought about the mysterious businessman. 

The following morning, wrapped in their thick coats, the group made their way towards the Reykjavik shipyard. One of the chorus girls, Lucille Henderson, came up beside Grace, "Where and what the hell is Rapture?" Before she could answer, Morris Lauderman (one of the musicians) puffing his cigar replied, "I don’t know where that is but we 'bout to be paid very well."  Grace pulled her coat around her and grabbed on to the rail of the SS Olympian and ascended into the ship. 

Sitting in her warm cabin, her suit lying beside her on the bed, Grace listened to the other girls running around in the rooms beside her, listing everything they would buy back in Harlem with the money they were gonna earn. Grace pondered on the idea of what she was gonna do once the show was over. The world had just been ripped apart by the war and was recovering. Since she had no plans to return to New York, where could she go? Perhaps she could talk to this strange Mr. Ryan..maybe there will be more work at this place... Rapture.


	5. Decent into Rapture

**_November 4th, 1946_ **

The ship made its way through the freezing North Atlantic waters, weaving between fields of ice. Grace was eating quietly in the main dining hall gazing out the portholes into the dark Atlantic, when a tall imposing figure sat down at her table. Grace had become acquainted with Charles Milton Porter after Mr. Ryan organized for the troupe to perform in the ship’s ballroom. With his advanced degree in Mathematics, Charles Porter had spent the past eight years in London working for Alan Turing and his code breaking team at Bletchley Park. In 1940, his wife Pearl however perished during Germany’s routine bombing of London. Grace noticed the lonely man wandering through the ship and decided to keep the man company for the remainder of their journey.

“Have you been to this Rapture before, Porter?” The dark attractive man peered at Grace from behind his menu, “Well, Mr. Ryan seems to want to keep it a bit of a mystery. However I’m wondering what he could want with a mathematician and a Harlem chorus girl in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.” Grace, finishing her steak, pulled her large fur coat around her and adjusted the little hat on her head. “Well wherever this place is, I hope it’s not as cold as Iceland.” She flashed him a smile and winked her brown eyes before departing for her cabin.

On that chilly November night, the Atlantic was terribly choppy. Passengers and their luggage were being lowered into lifeboats heading towards the strange lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. Attendants quickly shuffled Rapture’s gawking new residents through the elegantly built structure towards the next available bathysphere. A clearly frightened woman raised her voice.

  
“Hopefully you don’t expect all of us to fit inside that little thing!” The attendants threw her bags into the bathysphere and tried to guide her inside, “Oh! But I’m not used to such treatment. I’ve already had the worst time running from those dreadful Germans in North Africa..all that sand!” That last comment quickly got the woman in an argument with a nearby German passenger. Sitting beside Porter, half asleep in her coat, Grace watched out the little window as they descended into the ocean. Several minutes of staring at murky water, her eyes grew at the sight of what looked like the entire island of Manhattan submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Huge skyscrapers, office buildings and hotels all lit up while teams of fish fluttered through the city like birds would on the surface.

After reuniting with the rest of her troupe in the Bathysphere Lounge, Porter bade Grace farewell as he was impatient to reach his office at Rapture Central Computing. Lucille ran over to Grace, “Girl where have you been? Look at this place! Morris come get the girls’ bags!” The women walked on, arms linked searching for Mercury Suites, as the poor clarinetist, Morris struggled behind them with their luggage. Posters scattered across High Street and and a large banner outside the restaurant advertised:

 

The Kashmir Restaurant presents:  A. Tribble’s   
  
**Rapturous Blackbirds Revue**   
  
Transatlantic Vaudeville floor-show direct from Harlem   
  
\- Produced by Mr. Sander Cohen -   
  
November 5th, 1946   
  
  


Dressed in matching short red satin dresses, the girls shuffled across the floor as the band blared from the bandstand for their opening number. French waiters weaved their way through the girls to prepare the restaurant for it’s opening. Sander Cohen stood on the restaurant balcony with a megaphone shouting directions to the girls. Grace’s feet were throbbing from the complicated steps they had to learn from Mr. Sander Cohen. He was the meanest son-of-a-bitch she’d ever met. She couldn’t stand these overly artistic types, nor could she stand his damn mustache, always sitting crookedly on his face.

Finally an intermission came, the band struck up,  _ The Lady is a Tramp _ as the girls quickly made their way to the their makeshift dressing room to change costumes. Mr. Cohen grabbed Grace on as she passed the bar, “Next time, spend less time daydreaming and more time on dancing!” Grace nodded, she couldn’t afford to get on this devil’s bad side and ruin her opportunity in this new city. Mr. Cohen designed and payed for all their costumes, he was also funding the production of their floorshow during the week they would appear in Rapture. For some reason unknown to Grace, he singled her out for a solo part in the show ‘Probably to embarrass me further’, Grace thought. A bell ringed, it was time for her solo number. Rushing back to the restaurant floor in a tight fitting champagne-colored gown, Grace began singing. “  _ I could be happy, never be blue...I’d spend a lifetime devoted to you, all of this is true..if you only knew, what your love could do. _ ” The rehearsal was over thirty minutes later and the cast were able to retire to their rooms in Mercury Suites.

The opening night proved to be successful, despite the insults Cohen spat at them. The girls shuffled their feet across the polished parquet floor as Grace sang from the top of her lungs as a trumpet blared, “ _ Sweetheart, there’s heaven in your eyes, you’re an angel in disguise from up above! Sweetheart it’s you I idolize I know that you were sent to me for love _ …” The waiters once again weaved their way through the girls to serve the aristocratic audience that filled the restaurant. Outside, those unable to get inside watched from the door. Lucille nudged Grace and pointed her elbow in a particular direction, it was Porter sitting in the upper level balconies with a small group, ‘probably his colleagues from that computing place’ Grace thought.

After a exhausting successful week, the contract ended on November 11th. The troupe grabbed their luggage and caught the next bathysphere to the surface. Lucille, Morris and Grace decided they’d remain in Rapture a little while longer. Mr. Tribble and the rest of the group, surrounded by luggage, hugged the trio before they all boarded the bathysphere. “We had a great time here, but we’re heading back stateside. Come back when you’ve had enough of this... place,” Mr. Tribble looked around the beautiful underwater metropolis nervously. Perhaps Grace should’ve taken his advice.


End file.
